How big data is putting businesses at risk

Four out of five businesses are at risk of experiencing security breaches, noncompliance and financial liabilities as big data transforms the way in which data is processed and stored.

By 2016, more than 80% of organisations are expected to fail in developing successful data security policies across all data silos, research has predicted.

Gartner's principal research analyst, Brian Lowans, said: "The advent of big data and cloud storage environments is transforming the way in which data is stored, accessed and processed, and CISOs need to develop a data-centric security approach.

"Unfortunately this is not common practice today, and its planning is critical to avoid uncoordinated data security policies and management."

The report said the market so far has failed to offer CISOs the data-centric audit and protection (DCAP) products they need to operate across all silos effectively.

"Instead, the use of different tools for each silo is complicating the implementation of any businesswide data security plans due to different functionalities, network architectures and data repositories," said Gartner's research VP Earl Perkins.